The Whispering Grove
The ancients spoke of a tongue unfound, unraveling in ancient bark—a language where veins tell stories, where philosophy roots deep in the loamy earth. Walking amidst these storied giants, syllables form not in the mouth, but in the very marrow of the trunk. They speak, not in words, but in a cadence of storm and whisper, an unending song played by branches in the wind. One foot before another: the journey slows to a memory of roots.
"Do you hear it?" whispered the traveler, leaning closer to the violet-tinged moss. "Its song is the echo of permanence." Responded only by the breeze, the moss seemed to nod, saying what a thousand words could not, its affirmations a chorus bound more by silence than sound.
Stand, listen: a thousand voices merge into one. Overhead, broken skylights show a tapestry of green and gray. Somewhere a squirrel drops a nut—curious, curious, how time someone said. Time a river, yet here, a still ocean below an unbending sky. Whole days unravel, while knees sink gently into earth, merging, merging into the oak's infinite ledger of sighs and sleeps.